“I love antiheroes,” declares screenwriter Amber Noizumi. “As a woman, this idea of the goody two shoes girl next door has always annoyed me. The girl who looks and acts perfect. I don’t relate or find it interesting unless I’m rooting for her and against her at the same time.”
“I’m more selfish about it,” added Michael Green. “Any character that has a degree of specificity that’s so unique to them that you can put them in situations and know how they’ll behave. It creates story.”
In their current project, Blue Eye Samurai, which was just greenlit for Season 2, we see this anti-perfect, anti-goody two shoes, anti-hero in full color. The young warrior, Mizu (Maya Erskine) is driven by revenge against those who made her an outcast in Edo-period Japan.
But this certainly isn’t the first character Michael Green has crafted from the anti-hero psyche. His mind-boggling credits include Logan, Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, Murder on the Orient Express, The Call of the Wild, American Gods, Death on the Nile, and A Haunting in Venice to name a few.
The Wandering Swordsman
These characters, which screenwriter John Fusco referred to as the “Wandering Swordsman” and the “Lone Gunslinger,” follow a similar path in many Western and Samurai films. For Amber and Michael, the research began with Lady Snowblood, the 1973 revenge thriller.
“You can also see a lot of Tarantino inspiration in our show, but what were the inspirations for Kill Bill? So we went back further,” says Amber. “Then, it was getting into actual history books to see what we could draw from real history to inform our story and broaden the purview of the world.”
“As far as gunslinger and ronin,” adds Michael, “It’s a stranger comes to town. In a movie, you can keep them a lot more opaque, for almost the duration. You can have the most famous gunslinger in history called ‘The Man With No Name.’ In television, on the other side of the mirror, you start with that, but then start slowly scratching [away], forcing them to talk.”
Mizu (Maya Erskine) Photo courtesy of Netflix
“Then, we [the audience] are the ones who bear witness to the gunslinger or the ronin is actually experiencing emotionally. [Blue Eye Samurai] was always a TV show. I started in TV. Eight episodes was the first season. We want to tell 2, 3…4 seasons. We have a story we want to tell. The story you come up with tells you whether it’s a series or a feature.”
Amber says Mizu’s character was always meant to be a longer story on the silver screen. “This character has a long journey to go on. It wasn’t going to be a movie. It wasn’t even going to be eight hours.” Michael adds, “Lone Wolf and Cub was a film series and they made the first with the intention of making more. Mizu’s story was a saga.”
The Writing Partnership
Logistically, the screenwriters outline and chat together, but write separately. “We divide up scenes, exchange scenes, give each other notes, and then at some point, smash it together like a ‘Frankenbaby.’ We send it back and forth until we’re both happy.”
Michael has written many screenplays alone, but when it comes to television a partnership or writers’ room is always vital simply because “there’s so much to do.” As such, he’s asked many teams and partners about their logistics to see what works best.
“You have to find your way. Whenever I talk to long-standing teams, I ask how they divide it up. A lot of them have pretty unspoken, yet formalized routines they go through. How to change each other’s work, how to suggest things to one another, but not be a schmuck about it,” he jokes. “You can’t piss each other off. You have to be kind and thoughtful.”
As a married team, Amber thinks life would somewhat get in the way and they’d end up talking about dinner or who is picking up the kids. By brainstorming together, but working separately, they can better compartmentalize the work that needs to get done.
Some advice from asking this question that the duo has implemented came from Wernick and Reese (Zombieland, Deadpool). “They each write their scenes, put it together, then exchange their scenes. They do a pass on each other’s stuff or make notes. The unspoken rule is that if someone changes a line, you can change it again, but you can’t change it back to what it was. It has to be forward momentum.”
Michael Green & Amber Noizumi. Photo courtesy of Getty for Netflix.
Amber and Michael say there’s also sort of an unspoken “not it” as to who might write which scene, based on preference or avoidance. “When you’re in a team, the pronoun is ‘we.’ There’s never any sort of dividing up as I or me. Embrace it while you have an ampersand in your script. You are a we. You might fight in private, but in public, you are a unified front.”
Research is Stalling
In addition to partnership rules, writing with someone else helps their individual work too. “When you’re writing with somebody, you’re a little more cautious of your time. If you say you’re going to be finished by tonight, you don’t want to let that other person down.”
While many screenwriters go back to research for missing pieces, the screenwriters think it can be a waste of time. “If you’re stuck, it usually means you need to take a step back and you’re not where you should be. You may have painted yourself into the wrong corner.”
“Research is rarely the answer. I think a lot of writers use research as an excuse not to write. For me personally,” says Michael, “You have to stop researching and start writing, and go back to research after you’ve got something finished. If you can’t write because of research, you are stalling. In television, you work with other wonderful people, so ask them.”
That said, in another moment where they felt stumped about a fight scene, they did bust out some action figures to help them better describe the scene and find a solution to the problem. “We wanted to see what was humanly possible and together we figured out the best way to do it.”
As Alfred and Miles (Into the Badlands) shared with us about action pushing the story forward, Amber and Michael say there are other rules for the action genre that must be followed. “People want the action to be cool, so they miss the emotional aspects of the character. It needs to be part of the story, part of the character.”
Michael adds, “Action must be a character beat — a story beat — otherwise, it’s cut-able. If you just have something cool for cool’s sake, that resource will likely get cut, or it should get cut, or it’s just boring.”
The Tuning Fork
In terms of a North Star or tuning fork for the series, the writers say they knew the ending which helped them craft the overall arc and made choices somewhat simpler, since they knew where they were going with Mizu.
“We knew the ending beats of almost every episode and the ending of the season, so you have a North Star or tuning fork for that. You can change your mind as you go, but you want to be writing towards a concrete, decided ending. Otherwise you’re treading water and the audience can feel it.” Amber adds, “We also knew where we wanted her arc for the season to end story wise.”
For this story in particular, since it was going to be animated, they were careful as to how they wrote the action scenes on the page. “We were careful to direct on the page much more than you might. We called out individual shots and were specific with our storyboard team that those were shots.”
“A lot of times we were really specifically in what we needed visually, whether it was atmospheric details or a close up. Similarly, with action, in this case and with any action I write, you do have to write your action scenes. You have to design a concept for it and emotional stakes for it.“
Michael continues, “In a feature, a director and a stunt team might then plus that, but you are responsible to give them something to plus. That is your job. There is no insert director’s action scene here. That’s not writing. That’s biding time. Our action scenes were very well defined. It’s against a cliff. There are four guys. Here are the stakes. Here’s the high point. They then springboard off of that.”
Pitching and Public Speaking
“I’m not great at pitching,” jokes Michael. “You just have to find a version of you that you can be, in order to communicate. You don’t have to be perfect. You can read off your notes. One concrete piece of advice would be to take an acting class or a public speaking class. More of screenwriting involves public speaking than you might think, including pitching.”
“You don’t want the first time you’re in a meeting to be the first time you’re in a meeting. You want that to be a safe zone. Those are techniques that are teachable. For me, it was improv classes in college that were fun and helpful,” says Michael.
“Your nervous energy is just energy,” adds Amber. “Just make it energy. I’m feeling this way, but just make sure that you’re a delightful person and you have energy [for the meeting].” In addition, for this show in particular, the writing was the easy part and the difficulty came from producing the series. “Showrunning is about doing a million things and then stealing time to write,” concludes Michael.
Many screenwriters believe that the job is just writing a spec and selling it. It’s all of the other intangible things that go into it that must be done in order to have a true career in the business. “The other thing is, the people on the other side of the table – those are not the bad guys. You’re all in this and trying to rob a bank together. They just have a different set of problems than you do. If you understand their problems, you can get through the heist better.”
As a final piece of advice, Amber tells writers to think about “the most interesting thing about you” to find your voice. “What is most important to you? What do you have to say that nobody else can say? Find a way to say it. It can be comedy. It can be genre. But it needs to be your unique voice. That’s what gets your attention. What can you write that no one else can write?”
Michael adds, “Don’t assume that what you like is what you’re going to be great at. If you love rock and roll, but have an operatic voice, you’re an opera singer. Lean into that. It doesn’t mean you can’t train yourself to be a somewhat different type of writer, but you might surprise yourself with what you’re actually great at versus what you thought you’d be great at because you liked it.”
This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.
